Three key learnings around monetizing wine data have risen to the surface these past few weeks. I’d like to share them with you here, and they have to do with what wine businesses are willing to pay for, the pressure of investors, and how data scientists create efficiencies.

Where the Money Is

It’s one thing to collect the data; in fact, that’s what most digital platforms are literally engineered from the start to do. It’s another thing to use the data, and to know how to work with it most effectively. It’s the second part – putting the data to use – that earns the money. It’s what businesses are willing to pay for. Crossing the bridge from collecting data to applying it is the journey of Enolytics and every other data-oriented company I know.

Investors

The pressure an entrepreneur feels to take money from investors is palpable and profound, particularly within startup-heavy ecosystems in the U.S. like New York, San Francisco, and Boston. There does come a time when taking the money makes sense, namely when you’ve reached the tipping point of scale. We’re getting there, and we’re also mindful that we’re working within an industry that is for the most part still getting used to the mechanics of applying data to their business. In the meantime, I think there’s something to be said for building a product that businesses buy right now, learning from their comfort levels, and organically (and swiftly) edging things forward from there.

Efficiencies

I’m the first to say that I am not a data scientist. I’m a communicator and an observer. Here’s what I’ve learned while observing Enolytics’ team work with the data: it’s harder than you’d think, and every engagement that involves a new data set is an opportunity for efficiencies of scale. The more we do this, the more streamlined the workflow becomes. The more streamlined the workflow becomes, the more we can replicate the process quickly so that more wine businesses can gain relevant insights into their individual slice of the pie.